How programmers appeared in the Petersburg HSE
In 2018, the St. Petersburg School of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, which is engaged in the training of programmers in undergraduate and graduate programs, opened in the Petersburg HSE. In this post, we will tell you how programmers appeared at the university of a socio-economic profile, what we teach them, and whom and in what quantity we plan to recruit in 2019.
In fact, this new faculty can be called very conditionally. Its backbone was the team that created the Department of Mathematical and Information Technologies at St. Petersburg Academic University (SPbAU) . In 2008, the department team began to prepare masters, and in 2014, and bachelors in computer technology. Impressions of learning in this department can be found here .here and here . Due to some subjective circumstances, in the spring of 2018 we had to leave SPbAU and go to a new platform - to the St. Petersburg campus of the Higher School of Economics. And to go along with all the teachers (about 50 people) and students (about 80 people).
It should be noted that plans for the opening of the Faculty of Computer Science at the HSE - St. Petersburg were before our arrival. Since 2017, the Master's programs “Big data analysis in business, economy and society” and “Information systems and human-computer interaction” (albeit at the economics department) existed at the Petersburg HSE quite successfully (in economics), and in 2019 the university management was going to open a new computer faculty and start training bachelor programmers. However, our transition from the Academic University substantially corrected plans: the new faculty earned in the summer of this year, and since the autumn, the bachelor of 2-4 courses (former bachelor of 1-3 courses of SPbAU) and the 1st year masters appeared in the St. Petersburg University of Higher School of Economics ( former bachelors of the 4th year SPbAU).
Unfortunately, in HSE no first-year undergraduate admission was planned, so we missed a new set this year. Which may be for the better - it still took us some time to adapt the old programs to a new place. In particular, it turned out that students do not study at HSE not by semesters, but by modules resembling school quarters. It turns out that the number of study weeks is more here, and the number of subjects in a separate module is less. Despite these differences, we managed to fully maintain our undergraduate program, without losing any courses, or workload, or quality of teaching these courses. We will publish the impressions of our students a little later, but for now I want to tell you about how we are preparing for admission for the next academic year - both to the bachelor's program and to the magistracy.
Let's start with a bachelor degree. In the summer of 2019, the undergraduate program "Applied Mathematics and Computer Science" of the School of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science is planned to recruit 40 students for budget and 20 for extrabudgetary places. It should be noted that this is not very different from the recruitment of previous years - in 2017, at the Academic University, admission control numbers were 36 people. Of these, 27 places were taken by applicants enrolled in olympiads (we took winners and runners-ups of all-Russian competition and winners of first-level olympiads), and for the remaining 9 places there was a rather high Unified State Exam. As a result, the average score of the Unified State Exam in 2017 was 98.3 points. We still do not know what will happen to the admission to the Bachelor degree of the St. Petersburg Tower in 2019. However, there are hopes that it will become a little easier to come to us.
First, the HSE, unlike the Academic University, has the ability to receive on the budget in excess of the admission control figures. If more than 40 olympiadists come to us, the Tower will take everyone, allocating additional places from their own funds. Secondly, we have extrabudgetary places, and 20 places - the number is very conditional: again, if more applicants want to enroll in the program, the Tower will try to accept everyone. Finally, we hope that our traditional sponsors - the companies JetBrains and Yandex - will allocate grants for training and help those who lacked a little points. What will happen in reality - we will see in the summer of 2019 and try to tell you about the results of the admission campaign.
Now about the magistracy. I have already mentioned that before us in the Petersburg HSE there were two master programs - “Analysis of big data in business, economy and society” and “Information systems and human-computer interaction”. With our arrival, two new programs have appeared - “Programming and Data Analysis” and “Industrial Programming”. Unfortunately, the names are not very clear how the programs differ from each other, but I will now correct it.
It seems that we need to stop at this: to describe all the features of the four programs in one article is simply impossible. In the near future, we are planning a series of notes from our students who will talk more meaningfully about their studies. So stay tuned to our blog.
In fact, this new faculty can be called very conditionally. Its backbone was the team that created the Department of Mathematical and Information Technologies at St. Petersburg Academic University (SPbAU) . In 2008, the department team began to prepare masters, and in 2014, and bachelors in computer technology. Impressions of learning in this department can be found here .here and here . Due to some subjective circumstances, in the spring of 2018 we had to leave SPbAU and go to a new platform - to the St. Petersburg campus of the Higher School of Economics. And to go along with all the teachers (about 50 people) and students (about 80 people).
It should be noted that plans for the opening of the Faculty of Computer Science at the HSE - St. Petersburg were before our arrival. Since 2017, the Master's programs “Big data analysis in business, economy and society” and “Information systems and human-computer interaction” (albeit at the economics department) existed at the Petersburg HSE quite successfully (in economics), and in 2019 the university management was going to open a new computer faculty and start training bachelor programmers. However, our transition from the Academic University substantially corrected plans: the new faculty earned in the summer of this year, and since the autumn, the bachelor of 2-4 courses (former bachelor of 1-3 courses of SPbAU) and the 1st year masters appeared in the St. Petersburg University of Higher School of Economics ( former bachelors of the 4th year SPbAU).
Unfortunately, in HSE no first-year undergraduate admission was planned, so we missed a new set this year. Which may be for the better - it still took us some time to adapt the old programs to a new place. In particular, it turned out that students do not study at HSE not by semesters, but by modules resembling school quarters. It turns out that the number of study weeks is more here, and the number of subjects in a separate module is less. Despite these differences, we managed to fully maintain our undergraduate program, without losing any courses, or workload, or quality of teaching these courses. We will publish the impressions of our students a little later, but for now I want to tell you about how we are preparing for admission for the next academic year - both to the bachelor's program and to the magistracy.
Undergraduate
Let's start with a bachelor degree. In the summer of 2019, the undergraduate program "Applied Mathematics and Computer Science" of the School of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science is planned to recruit 40 students for budget and 20 for extrabudgetary places. It should be noted that this is not very different from the recruitment of previous years - in 2017, at the Academic University, admission control numbers were 36 people. Of these, 27 places were taken by applicants enrolled in olympiads (we took winners and runners-ups of all-Russian competition and winners of first-level olympiads), and for the remaining 9 places there was a rather high Unified State Exam. As a result, the average score of the Unified State Exam in 2017 was 98.3 points. We still do not know what will happen to the admission to the Bachelor degree of the St. Petersburg Tower in 2019. However, there are hopes that it will become a little easier to come to us.
First, the HSE, unlike the Academic University, has the ability to receive on the budget in excess of the admission control figures. If more than 40 olympiadists come to us, the Tower will take everyone, allocating additional places from their own funds. Secondly, we have extrabudgetary places, and 20 places - the number is very conditional: again, if more applicants want to enroll in the program, the Tower will try to accept everyone. Finally, we hope that our traditional sponsors - the companies JetBrains and Yandex - will allocate grants for training and help those who lacked a little points. What will happen in reality - we will see in the summer of 2019 and try to tell you about the results of the admission campaign.
Master's
Now about the magistracy. I have already mentioned that before us in the Petersburg HSE there were two master programs - “Analysis of big data in business, economy and society” and “Information systems and human-computer interaction”. With our arrival, two new programs have appeared - “Programming and Data Analysis” and “Industrial Programming”. Unfortunately, the names are not very clear how the programs differ from each other, but I will now correct it.
- Let's start with the old Vyshkin program "Analysis of big data in business, economy and society". This program is designed for those applicants who are not programmers and, most importantly, are not going to become them. We are waiting for economists, sociologists and representatives of other non-core from the point of view of programming specialties who want to pump skills and increase their attractiveness in the eyes of employers in a very popular direction - data analysis. It is no secret that now there is an explosive interest in this field of applied mathematics. We hope that graduates of the program will be in demand both in business and in relevant areas of socio-economic sciences. On “Big Data Analysis ...” we give elements of programming, statistics, machine learning, and also tell you how to apply this knowledge in economics, marketing, finance, sociology, etc.
- The second program that existed in the Petersburg HSE prior to our arrival is “Information systems and human-computer interaction” . It is also designed for students specializing in the social sciences. Now I will not go into details, but I will devote a separate post to her a bit later.
- The next program is “Industrial Programming” . It is designed for those who are not a programmer, but really want to become one. We have been teaching this program in the magistracy of the Academic University for ten years. It is important that at the entrance we do not require programming skills from applicants. All that we need from them is to think well, and also to be ready to give up everything and to plow cruelly for the next two years, without being distracted by anything other than school. The reason for this is quite simple: in two years from a non-programmer to make a quality programmer, you need to "shove" all the basic courses into your head, and also have time to tell something meaningful on special courses. As a result, the program of this magistracy is very rich and requires real dedication and self-sacrifice from the applicants.
- And finally, “Programming and Data Analysis”. This is a completely new direction for us, designed for advanced programmers who have completed a decent undergraduate degree. We will recruit students who do not need to read Lybesian math and programming courses, who could easily find a job in a good IT company, but instead came to our magistracy to do research in machine learning, data analysis, programming languages, etc. Of course, we expect that the graduates of our bachelor’s program will go to “Programming and Data Analysis”. However, we hope that this program will interest not only them, but also other strong graduates who are simply not interested in coding, but it is interesting to move to a new level and become a programmer-researcher.
It seems that we need to stop at this: to describe all the features of the four programs in one article is simply impossible. In the near future, we are planning a series of notes from our students who will talk more meaningfully about their studies. So stay tuned to our blog.